Last Resort
by Ghost-of-Bee
Summary: Dinner with a hostile stranger was not on the holiday itinerary for James or Lily, but it beats getting hit with an ice cube. [AU]
1. Part 1

**Authors' Note:** Part one of four, originally posted up at A03 _just_ in the nick of time for Jilytober. Enjoy!

* * *

**Last Resort**

Lily is standing at the door with her keycard in her hand when the texts ping through to her phone.

_Don't come in lol, shagging next door guy and needed you out  
Soz lol  
Nothing personal  
Don't hate the player hate the game x_

The last message is followed by a giggle and a _thunk_ from the other side of the door, clear indications of a dalliance that her friend had been openly plotting in Lily's very presence.

And yet, somehow, she's been hoodwinked.

She leaps, in an instant, from indifference to white-hot rage.

This is meant to be her vacation too. It's meant to be _their_ vacation, their girly week away. The major caveat of a girly week away is supposed to be a total embargo on men, that much is clear. That any man would be permitted to enter their room for any reason but to present either woman with a shiny room-service platter would be nothing short of criminal, an outrageous offence against the sanctity of womanhood, not to mention friendship.

And Beatrice, for all her crowing about how much they've both needed this time to themselves, has gone and allowed some man to enter _her._

So Lily is, quite rightfully, outraged.

Outraged, and holding a bucket of ice.

In a hotel corridor.

Alone.

Abandoned.

She stares in disbelief at the sock—the _sock,_ as if Bea had to go that hard—her friend has tied to the door handle. It's one of the Anna and Elsa socks that Lily bought in the Disney store last week, to add insult to injury. That those two wholesome, innocent sisters could be used for nefarious purposes, that the princess and queen of Arendelle have been polluted by Beatrice's treachery and greed and filthy, filthy lust, is an abomination of the highest order.

Worst of all, it's Lily's sock; a sock that she hasn't even had a chance to wear, and it's being used to keep her locked out of her own hotel room while her alleged best friend shags the sweater-wearing primary school teacher she'd met just that morning in the queue for the concierge's desk.

And yes, Beatrice _had_ told Lily, "I'm going to sleep with that guy," directly after their first conversation, but Lily hadn't supposed that she'd be doing it _that very night._

She's outraged.

In a hotel corridor.

Holding a bucket of ice.

Alone.

Abandoned.

And unlike Elsa, completely unwilling to let it go.

* * *

"Where's Remus?"

James poses the question simply enough—cool, unaffected, stepping out of the hotel room loo after his shower, rubbing briskly at his still wet hair with one of the resort's poshly plush towels.

That he finds himself posing the question to Sirius—who is somehow, for some reason, scantily clad in a white shirt, socks, and sunglasses, sliding with little skill but much enthusiasm across the hotel room's slick wooden floor à la Tom Cruise, all _despite _the fact that the blighter has been loudly declaring himself thoroughly infirm with a botched foot for the past twenty-four hours after barely only catching sight of the hiking trail James and Remus had selected as their first holiday activity yesterday, is...less simple. But thoroughly Sirius. So James knows better than to waste time questioning it.

"Shhh," the blighter in question replies.

"Don't shush me." James checks the clock on the bedside table. Half seven. Suspicious. "Did you run him off? He'd better get back here soon. Easier to fetch the holy grail than to get this reservation. I'm not missing it."

"Shhh," Sirius says again.

James throws him a look. "You get to whinge incessantly about a fake broken foot, but I don't get three moments to complain about restaurant reservations?"

"You asked a question. I'm giving you an answer," Sirius replies, looking smug even behind the thick black sunglasses. "_Shhh. _Listen."

James is really not in the mood for Sirius's games. He's starved, and was hoping to pop down early to the restaurant to see if he might poke his head in back. Mum knew the executive chef vaguely, and James had met him once, at an awards dinner they were both attending. It would likely be commented upon if he was spotted and didn't even say hullo. Remus was good for that sort of thing—content to huddle at the bar while James did his professional duties. If only he'd show up _now_, they could head straight down.

But Remus is nowhere in sight, and Sirius is still waiting for silence, so James obediently closes his mouth, though not without a large, exasperated sigh.

There's the steady tick of the bedside clock, the light hum of the television Sirius has set on low, and some kind of sporadic noises filtering in through the shared wall between their room and next door.

"What," James asks, "am I listening for?"

"Remus," Sirius answers simply.

"Remus."

"Yes."

"Well, I don't hear Remus. I hear the clock. And the telly. And what sounds like someone possibly having an evening shag next door. What are you on about?"

With a slow spreading grin, Sirius's dark eyebrows arch high and pointed over the sunglasses.

It comes to James, suddenly, with abject disbelief, just as a particularly low moan sounds from next door, along with something that sounds distinctly like furniture hitting the wall.

"No," he says, towel dropping from his hand.

Sirius's grin only grows wider.

Oh, bloody _hell_.

"Funny thing," Sirius muses. "Remember the bird from the concierge queue? Had Remus all chuffed? Wouldn't you know—has the room _right _next door."

James lets out a long, anguished groan, even as Sirius begins to chuckle appreciatively at his own stellar wit, and gives another slide down past the beds. James looks to the shared wall with muted misery, hoping Sirius is just having a laugh, that the noises stop, that it's proven to be just a few kids playing enthusiastic bed jumping games...but the noises continue in their telling way and Sirius simply looks too pleased with himself for this to be anything other than the god-honest truth.

"For fuck's _sake_," James mutters, and checks the clock again. 7:35. "How long has he been in there?"

Sirius shrugs with disinterest, then flings himself backwards like a high jumper straight onto his bed.

"I'm starving," James complains, stomach grumbling in agreement. "I've had these reservations for months. If he's not going, you are."

"Can't," Sirius says, squirming amid the blankets. "Bum foot."

"Fuck off."

"That's unkind." The sunglasses slip ever so slightly upward as Sirius gets comfortable. "No wonder you can't find a dinner date."

James makes a noise of indignant frustration, sticking Sirius with one last dirty look as he strides decisively for the door, uncertain of exactly what he's going to do, but certain he can't do much at all in here.

"Your head is decidedly more cracked than that _perfectly healthy _foot of yours," he calls over his shoulder, swinging open the door, "if you honestly think—"

But what Sirius may or may not honestly think is lost promptly to the wind, substituted with a fumbling "—_oof_!" from James as he suddenly finds himself _falling_, legs unsuspectedly tripped cleanly out from beneath him, sent inconceivably a-scramble by some interfering object lying directly across the hotel room threshold.

There is an indelicate lunge, a windmilling of arms, an unsophisticated pumping of legs, before James somehow manages to catch himself on the closed door across the hall, crashing against it with an undignified _smack_, the most overaggressive and accidental knock in all of creation.

Ow.

_Ow._

He just rests there for a moment: stunned, shamed, incredulous.

Then he turns slowly, eyes roving the corridor for the culprit of this patent _abuse_...and finds nothing, until he aims his gaze downwards.

There's a woman.

A woman, sitting there on the floor, legs outstretched diagonally across his doorway, staring blankly at him, with a short silver ice bucket cuddled against her side.

"Why did you look up first?" says the woman, visibly annoyed. "It's not like you hit your head; you tripped over my legs."

Bizarrely, she is holding an ice cube between her thumb and forefinger, dripping water all over the carpet.

James stares at her flat expression, at her culpable legs, at the melting ice cube.

"What?" he asks dumbly.

She shrugs, pops the ice cube into her mouth, and bites down on it with an audible _crunch._

It's a strange tableau, watching this odd woman munch away, with James still lying half sprawled upon the door that her long, obstructing, denim-clad limbs had sent him sailing into. She seems about his age, ginger-haired, and terribly normal, minus the whole ground-ice-shrug bit. He waits for something more from her, but only gets the shrug—and it's not even a _sorry, this is just where we are_ sort of shrug. It's very clearly a _yes, I said what I said_ taunting shoulder lift.

She is, quite simply, unaffected and unrepentant for nearly sending him sprawling to his death.

And pretty.

_Very _pretty.

But that somehow makes it worse.

"What," he tries again, finally lifting himself off the adjacent door, "are you doing on the floor?"

With absolutely no change to her disinterested expression, she crunches the ice cube once more. "Pilates."

"What?"

_Crunch. _"I'm binge-eating ice." _Crunch._ "Obviously."

"_Can_ you binge-eat ice? Isn't that just drinking water?"

"Semantics," she says, with a second shrug. "Hydration is hydration."

"And you had...nowhere else to hydrate?"

"Well, I _tried_ downstairs, but Mr. Moseby was all, 'no eating ice in my lobby!' so I came up here."

James narrows his eyes at her, refusing to so much as allow a lip flutter to affect his disapproving scowl.

"Don't think you'll distract me with Disney Channel witticisms," he warns her. "You nearly sent me crashing to my death! _Why_ are you binge-eating ice on the floor?"

"Because ice is _all I have,"_ she tells him, with what he feels might be an unnecessary amount of fervour, fixing him with a glare that could burn a hole through titanium.

"All you—" James shakes his head. There's a level of drama to this encounter that suddenly seems suspect. "Are you drunk?" he asks.

"Yeah, these ice cubes are real strong stuff," she responds, her voice flat. "Don't let me drive later, will you?"

"You're on the _floor_," James reminds her, pointing down to it, to her, just in case props are required for proper understanding. "In the middle of a corridor. At a posh resort. Like a human safety hazard. Or a pending lawsuit."

"You're annoying me in the middle of a corridor like human junk mail. Or a pending corpse," the girl immediately retorts. She sticks her hand into the silver bucket on the floor and picks out another ice cube, which she flicks in his direction—spattering his trousers with droplets of water—before dropping it into the bucket again.

"Oi!" He brushes briskly at the damage. "I've got somewhere to go, you know!"

"Good for you!" she snaps back, gesturing down the corridor. "Rub it in, why don't you?"

"Rub it in? You're the one _choosing_ to sprawl yourself on the floor, launching ice cubes at innocent people like the bloody Antarctic Armada!"

"Choosing to sprawl—I'm not _choosing_ to be here!" He appears to have touched a nerve. "I'm here because my best friend ousted me from our room to shag some random guy she's only just met: a logical conclusion that you should have come to easily, so it's not _my_ fault if you didn't."

"_Logical_?" James scoffs, though some part of his brain is connecting scattered pieces—friend, ousted, shagging random guy—though he's soon distracted by the sight of the telling sock tied quaintly upon the door handle whose threshold this unfriendly hotel guest has chosen to haunt, like a grumpy troll with riddles three. Except more attractive. And with ice projectiles. His head tilts quizzically. "Is that Elsa and Anna?"

"No, it's Anna and Elsa. Order by alphabet, not by age."

"As the reigning monarch," James objects, "I reckon I had the right of it, actually."

"She's not real, for Chrissakes," the woman counters. "Can't I just sit here and plot my revenge without being questioned by random Calvin Klein models who haven't even the decency to step _around_ my legs? I'm trying to wallow in the depths of despair here."

_Wallow_, indeed, is what she's doing, and with a flair for the theatrical that James might have respected had he not somehow been made innocent victim to it. He refuses to be wooed by likely empty compliments, especially from a woman who seems utterly unconcerned with how close he's recently come to door-driven death, and how bleak this encounter and the information grudgingly provided bodes for his evening's plans.

He's hungry, and has been hoodwinked, and is now being _harangued _about it—doesn't that count for anything?

"Rather shallow depths, if all you've managed to sink to is the floor, no?" he mutters, and she makes an offended noise, but James continues. "Pop back up here to earth for a moment, and you might have noticed that the bloke you and your legs just nearly sent sailing to his death has _also_ been abandoned." James jabs a finger pointedly at the hotel room door she's huddled against. "There are two moans going off in there, and _one _of them was meant to be spending the evening with me!"

"So this is your fault?"

"_My_—how could this possibly be my fault?"

"Because you clearly weren't keeping an eye on him."

"Maybe you ought to have been keeping an eye on _her_."

"I _was,_ but she sent me to get ice."

"And you fell for that?"

"Maybe," she admits, albeit in a haughty murmur, "but at least _I_ didn't fall over the outstretched legs of an adult-sized human, you master of observation."

It's simply not _fair_, how quickly she comes back at him.

He's too bloody starved to be clever.

"An adult-sized human lying across _my _hotel room threshold!" he cries, but receives a dismissive scoff at this assertion. All he can do is scowl petulantly down at her. "Master of observation I may not be, but at least I'm master of my own room key." He flashes her the white plastic card, brandishing it in clear taunt. "So who's in real shambles here?"

"I _have_ my key, but what am I supposed to do, barge in there with jazz hands mid-fellatio?"

It's an image to be sure—this mad woman, with those long, dangerous legs of hers, kicklining into the hotel room with top hat and jazz hands aflutter as two conjoined forms beneath covers cry and object in lustful protest. James stifles a grin.

_Must _stifle a grin. Because this woman does not deserve his grins.

Even though she is clever.

She is clever and a _nuisance_.

"I think you can leave out the jazz hands," he says instead, then waves her on. "But, yes. Go get my mate. We have dinner reservations at eight."

"How could you mention _dinner"_—she sends an ice cube flying in his direction with gusto—"to me when you _know _I'm _starving?"_

James jerks his head down, but—_splat_—still feels the icy wetness crack against his ducked forehead. He swipes at it, though the cube has already hit the ground.

"Oi!" He lifts his head back up in outrage. "You never even _said _you were starving!"

"Why'd you think I'm eating ice cubes?!" she squeaks, holding her wet hand aloft. "My purse is inside so I can't buy food; it was a choice between that or chewing on the carpet. And you shouldn't have ducked," she adds sulkily, slumping back against the wall. "That wouldn't have hit you if you hadn't ducked."

"I'm sorry my act of self-preservation got in the way of your warning missile strike," James returns dryly, rubbing the wet splotch into his skin. "Fortunately, you haven't the strength of a baby bird. Really have nailed the disposition of an angry cat, though."

"I don't like you," she informs him grandly, lifting her nose in the air like a duchess with a delicate constitution. "Go back into your room."

"You can't _order _me back to my room," James gapes.

His adversary lets out an angry _harumph_ and reaches above her head to yank the loosely-tied sock off the door handle. She pulls it down over her dry hand like she's putting on a glove, and when she holds her hand up for James to inspect, a smirking Queen Elsa is stretched distortedly across her palm.

"As the reigning monarch," she says, in a cold, mocking way, opening and closing her hand like she's working a puppet. "I _banish_ you to your room."

"You—" James expels a noise—a short, gasping sort of sound, one that he is mutinously unwilling to admit might be anything resembling a laugh, though under calmer tides and smoother storms might one day concede was exactly that—instead choosing to stifle it with a crossly scrunched mouth and the dirtiest look he can muster, taking all repressed emotion out on his poor hotel door, which receives a rough swipe-in with his previously taunted keycard, then a brisk and decisive _snap_ as he stomps inside and kicks the portal closed behind him.

She _banishes _him to his room.

_Banishes_.

With a bloody _sock puppet_.

That..._that_…

James looks up, finding Sirius in exactly the same spot that he left him—draped across his bed, disinterested in James, though somehow in the mere minutes James has been outside grappling with a beautiful and batshit banshee, he's managed to don a robe, slippers, and the entirety of a bright green facemask, which sets his features frozen and sodden as he flips casually through television channels.

"We are going to dinner," James announces briskly.

"No, we are not," Sirius returns immediately, and points the remote higher. "Why are you laughing?"

"I'm not—" But he _is_, somehow, laughing quietly to himself, and Sirius knows James is too well acquainted with the sight of him at spa-ly leisure to reckon the robe and face mask are the cause.

James glances over his shoulder at the closed portal, staring at it with incredulous...hell, it _is _amusement, isn't it?

That doesn't make any sense. _None _of this makes any sense. James had only wanted to go to his long-planned dinner, eat a fine meal, and then head straight back for bed, like the dullest twenty-four-year-old in all of creation. He's been exhausted at work the past few months and _needed _this quick week's getaway with the lads. Everything had been going swimmingly, until Sirius decided he was allergic to any holiday activity except the spa, and Remus had gone off to _get_ off with some woman he'd met on a concierge queue who he hadn't even _known _twelve hours ago. And where does that leave James?

Alone.

Abandoned.

With his only joy coming from an ice-chucking virago who has just declared that she doesn't like him and then banished him to his room.

With a _sock puppet._

Fucking hell, she's _funny_, isn't she?

And starving. Just like James. And alone and abandoned. Just like James. Honestly, they have more in common than they don't, here in this moment, both victims of circumstance and horny mates. It simply isn't _fair_ that the universe might do this to them—leaving her alone with her ice bucket, and him relegated to eating at one of the best restaurants in all of Kent like a lonely, friendless failure. It doesn't matter how crap he is at observation, or how wicked her aim is with an ice cube. They simply do not deserve this sort of treatment.

But what can he…

He pauses.

Thinks.

Can he actually…?

But that would be _insanity_, wouldn't it? She'll say no. She will _absolutely_ say no. James very nearly _wants_ her to say no, in fact. Restaurants are bound to have more ice cubes, and James simply does not think she is a safe woman around them. But what's the worst that happens? She turns him down, and he's left in _exactly_ the same position he is right now—forced to face dinner alone, or not at all? So what's he got to lose?

Well, his pride, he supposes. But she's already made quick work of that on first meeting, so who needs it, really?

_This is madness_, James thinks, even as he finds himself turning around, reaching for the door handle, and opening the portal again. He steps—_carefully_, with decisive movements over still outstretched legs—back into the corridor, where he faces down his foe with arms akimbo.

_Madness_, he thinks.

Oh well.

"Do you want to go to dinner?" he asks.

She blinks up at him. "With who?"

"Me."

"No!"

"I'll pay."

Her chest lifts in a breath that she holds for a bit, surveying him with suspicion from beneath furrowed brows, then she lets out a sigh and yanks the sock off her hand.

"Oh, _fine,"_ she agrees, rising gracefully to her feet. "Where were you thinking of going?"


	2. Part 2

**Authors' Note:** Part 2 of 4. Enjoy!

* * *

"Potter," says the stranger to the maitre d.

This sullen, attractive stranger, who has taken it upon himself to feed her.

Because this is happening.

To Lily.

Somehow.

She's been taken to dinner by a man she doesn't know. Mary would smack her for being so careless, if she were here.

Of course, if Mary were here in Beatrice's stead, Lily wouldn't have been abandoned for a quick shag in the first place. She wouldn't be in this situation, dining with a random and placing her life on the line, for all she knows.

Still, the resort has CCTV surveillance and she is intent upon watching her drinks closely, so it's unlikely that she'll wind up dead by the end of the night. This is fine, despite the fact that she is hearing his name for the first time in this moment, and a name is really a thing a girl should know about her companion for the evening. The _first_ thing a girl ought to know, really. She knows that his friend's name is Remus but that doesn't count for anything, and she could be the bigger person and offer this stranger—this _Potter—_her own, but holding onto it for no good reason seems more principled, in a way. He hasn't ventured his to Lily. Why should she offer something that he isn't willing to give?

Still, there's something almost likeable about him.

There must be, since readily agreed to have dinner with the guy, and Lily's instincts rarely steer her wrong. Or she's just _that_ hungry.

Time will tell.

"Potter," the smartly dressed maitre d murmurs in response, running his finger down the page of a leather-bound diary. Most restaurants have gone digital in this day and age, but the truly bourgeois approach involves a passionate commitment to outdated methods. "I saw it here a moment ago. For two, wasn't it?"

"Ye—"

"I didn't even know his name until just now," Lily tells the maitre d. It's an unusual thing to say, and will surely jog his memory if she winds up dead on tomorrow's evening news. "Met him about ten minutes ago, now look at us. _Potter._ Am I appropriately dressed, do you think?" The maitre d looks up in alarm, so Lily gestures to her jeans. "These are my good jeans; I was supposed to be having dinner with my friend so I was going for a smart-casual thing, but then she abandoned me to have sex with _his_ friend and we came here, so now I feel as if I'm _not_ dressed particularly nicely."

"The restaurant has no formal dress code, madam," says the maitre d.

"No formal dress code, but there are still unspoken rules. Is my top okay?" She's become quite aware of her cleavage in the past sixty seconds. "I always hear people say that redheads shouldn't wear red, which is nonsense, and honestly I think I look pretty good, but that's, like, good within the context of a Prezzo or something. This place is different. Although my shoes _do_ work, I think. _Am_ I appropriately dressed?" She looks to the stranger—no, Potter—for confirmation. "You'd know, if you often visit places like this."

"You're fine," he answers quickly, though he barely even spares her clothes an actual glance, instead smiling with over-politeness at the maitre d, who is looking increasingly less alarmed and decidedly more amused by this exchange. Lily feels a large hand drop to the small of her back, nudging lightly, and Potter leans close to her ear as the maitre d leans back over his book.

"Was that all necessary?" he whispers.

"About as necessary as it was for you to touch me," she responds with saccharine falseness, reaching behind her back to grab his wrist and wrench his hand away. "You can't take a second to answer an honest question about what I'm wearing?"

He tucks his hands into his trouser pockets, gives a heady sigh, then gives her outfit a proper look.

"You're fine," he confirms again, though he sounds bothered by it. "Very pretty."

_I'm sorry I don't look worse,_ she almost retorts, given his sour puss, but the maitre d interrupts them with a clipped, "Your table is this way, madam."

Madam. _Not_ sir. That gives Lily some satisfaction.

She throws Potter a look of deep disdain and strides ahead of him—she can simply imagine that she's wearing fancier clothes in this fancy, elegant place; that's precisely what Anne Shirley would do in this situation—following their host to a small table near the very back of the restaurant, tucked neatly away behind a large display of leafy plants. A waiter is already there, pouring out glasses of water from a rustic copper jug.

She may rescind her previous assessment. Perhaps the truly bourgeois approach involves a passionate commitment to outdated methods _and_ impressive efficiency.

The maitre d pulls out Lily's chair and waits until she is seated before he lays their menus on the table and departs with the waiter, who promises to return shortly for their drink orders.

She looks up at Potter, who hasn't sat down yet.

He looks down at her.

The thought occurs to her that if she could have _designed_ a man with whom she might spend an evening in a lavish restaurant like this, he'd probably look...well, exactly like him.

He's rather lush and beautiful, really.

And Lily is mentally undressing him like a mute, lascivious wench who hasn't been laid in far too long, so she picks up her menu and buries her face behind it.

She hears another weighty sigh, feels the table nudged slightly as her dinner mate untucks his own seat and slips into it. There's a delicate rustle of napkin and a brush of silverware, then his dry voice muttering, "I hope you're happy. Now we've been placed in the naughty corner."

"How do you know we're in the naughty corner?"

"Look how far we are from the nearest table. And all this leafery? Classic naughty table. All restaurants have them." He states it simply, declaratively. Lily can't see his face but can imagine an expression of mild disgust. "Trust me. We've officially been sequestered for the safety of other patrons."

"Why? Because someone might faint if they catch a glimpse of my proletarian jeans?"

"I think the larger concern is that you might abruptly decide to leap up shouting 'Stranger danger!' mid-meal," he replies, though he's sounding almost amused by it now. "Reckon you can manage to keep that one in?"

"Well now, I don't know," she remarks, and wants to laugh at that, but doesn't.

She almost does, in truth, but it doesn't really matter that she has to check herself. Her menu is raised too high for him to see the tucked-in corners of her lips.

Besides, the menu itself is a tad alarming—not the food, which seems delicious, but the cost of pretty much everything, from a glass of Coke to the price of a basic starter.

These are London prices. _High-end_ London prices.

But they're in Kent.

Jesus.

Lily has one or two friends who are fortunate enough to have money, but she wouldn't feel happy to let _them_ pay for her here and her companion is a stranger to whom she has, admittedly, been rather unkind from the moment he set foot out of his door. She isn't usually hard on people. She tries to be kind as a general rule of thumb. The trouble with _this_ guy is that he caught her at the worst imaginable moment—as she'd been lied to, passed over, abandoned, while her stomach growled and she felt perfectly convinced that she'd be forced to spend the night curled up on a carpeted hotel corridor, at least until she was discovered by a porter and thrown from the hotel for loitering.

And it was her best friend who'd stuck the knife in her back, of all people. Lily is furious about the whole thing still, and fury doesn't marry well with genuine contrition. She is a person who does not enjoy admitting to a mistake at the very best of times, even when she _does _feel truly remorseful for her actions, and who is this guy to her? Not someone she knows, someone who matters, not someone she will ever need speak to again after tonight.

She doesn't feel particularly sorry. Not right now.

She'd flung that ice cube with naught but dramatic intent, expecting it to miss him by inches. He's the one who ducked_ towards_ it.

So was that _really_ her fault?

Yes it was. She threw ice at another human being. That was shitty.

But.

_But._

She'll take out some cash at the ATM later, she decides, stick it in an envelope and push it under his door. That will solve the problem of the expense he's sparing, even if the matter of her earlier behaviour looms ominously on the horizon. Thinking of it makes her stomach churn a bit, so she'd rather just pretend it's not there. Dismounting the high horse she rode in on with any pretense of grace seems too awkward and humiliating a task for her to attempt it now.

Start as one means to go on, she supposes.

"Question," she says, dropping her menu abruptly. Potter is already looking in her direction, his menu left untouched, as if he's been waiting for her to notice that he's still there. She tilts her head to one side, observing him for any signs of bloodlust, but sadly perceives nothing but his startlingly attractive bone structure and a whirlwind of black hair that she feels oddly compelled to touch. "Am I to be brutally murdered later?"

"I'm exclusively a Tuesday night brutal murderer," he returns immediately, and picks up his menu. "Good on you for catching me on a Wednesday."

"I reckon I could take you, even if you were out for blood."

"Maybe _I _ought to be the one shouting 'stranger danger', then?"

"Maybe," she sighs, "but moving on from _my_ plans, what's the limit on this dinner offer? Bread and water? I'd like to know what's acceptable to order before I go ahead and order it."

"Order whatever you'd like." He lowers his menu enough to view her with suspiciously friendly aplomb. There's a tasteful candle set atop their table that lights an undoubtedly deceptive warmth in his eyes. "I fully intend to sue you for bodily negligence after that nice leg trip earlier, so it'll all come back around in the end."

"Go for it, you'll net yourself the cost of this meal and a few spare pennies once they've cleared out my life savings."

"It's really a matter of principle over profit," he declares, then gives a regal hand swipe. "So eat up. I'll claim victory in any case."

"Then I'll take the bread and water. Better that than adding more zeroes to the settlement amount."

"Follow your heart, though I'm quite serious about the carte blanche." His lips give a rueful sort of pinch, long and pursed and distracting. "You've replaced Remus, the most expensive dinner date on the planet, as the git only eats steak and has no qualms splurging for the most posh cut to be had, so you could order three different meals and likely still come out costing less than him."

This is so odd, and _would_ be odd, from even the most objective standpoint. Especially from the most objective standpoint.

He seems really serious about this. About treating her.

_Why?_

"So he costs you a fortune and abandons you on a whim to have porn-style sex with my friend in what I _hope_ is the bed she's been using, and not mine?" says Lily. "You ought to concoct a revenge plot."

"Like Inigo Montoya?"

"I mean… a little less stabby than Inigo Montoya's, if you can manage." She will _not_ smile at this. She won't. "I've already got one, but I can't let you borrow it."

"Why not?"

"So, Beatrice—that's my friend—has booked us on winery tour in Tunbridge Wells for Friday that she's been raving about all week and basically wheedled me into because, y'know, this is a 'girls' holiday,' and we have to do things together," Lily explains, using her fingers to form the figurative quotation marks, "so after careful deliberation and abandonment of my usual principles, I've decided that I'm going to sexile her, and you can't borrow that because your mate _hasn't_ booked a winery tour for Friday."

He seems to lose his grip on his menu, the finely-lined placard clattering noisily against his plate.

"You're going to...sorry?"

"To sexile her."

"What—"

"I'm going to find some guy and skip the tour to have dirty sex with him in our room."

He grabs back up the menu. Puts it down again. More plate clatter. Blinks.

"You're...right, then." He clears his throat, then drinks his water. His hands are moving rapidly around the table. "How very...eye for an eye. Or, er, some other body part, I suppose."

"I intend to put all the body parts to good use," she warns darkly, reaching for her own water glass. "I'm not throwing away my revenge for the sake of a twenty minute fumble with some prat who doesn't know where he's meant to put it. This has to last for hours, otherwise what's the point in doing it at all?"

"That's...thorough of you," he offers, and seems to have officially decided what he'd like to do with his menu, lifting it up and ducking neatly behind it. "And honest, y'know, considering we're little more than strangers."

"Twenty minutes ago, I'd never seen you before in my life. Now we're having dinner together," Lily reminds him. She takes a sip of her water and sets the glass down with a clunk. "A dinner _you_ invited me to, by the way. That cow has been well and truly milked, don't you think?"

There's a coughing sound—or perhaps it might even be a chuckle—from behind the propped up menu, but Lily doesn't have time to figure it out before their waiter strolls over, and stops at their table expectantly.

"Are you ready to order drinks?" he asks, directing the question to Lily, as any good waiter should.

"I'm good with water, thank you," she responds.

The menu on the other side of the table drops, revealing her tablemate once more. He _is_ smiling.

"Get a proper drink," he says. "Really. Revenge and lawsuits aside. Remus would."

"Then I'll have a glass of Azabache white rioja," she says immediately, directing her own smile to the waiter instead. It's fine. She has that ATM plan. "A _large_ glass, please. It's been a very trying day and I've been recently betrayed."

Across the table, there comes a warm sound—by god, could that be a proper _laugh?_—before Potter says, "Let's make that a bottle then, thanks."

Perhaps the maitre d had warned the waiter to expect some drama, for a look of disappointment briefly crosses his face before he whisks away to fetch their drinks. Lily and her companion are left to enjoy the ornate silverware and flickering taper candles in peace, accompanied by the faint but discernible strains of You Should Be Having Sex In A Giant Bathtub by Beethoven-or-Mozart-or-similar (in the key of Just Slip That Diamond Ring Into Her Champagne Glass Already). The overall ambience is bent towards the romantic and the sublime with such shameless pomp and conviction that it paints their unique situation in a rather laughable shade of strange.

Not that it wasn't strange already, but she finds the juxtaposition quite amusing.

"Do you actually like that wine, or did you order it to make me feel more comfortable?" she asks him, rather than ruminate aloud upon this, or ask when he means to propose.

He toys with his water glass. "Bold of you to assume I'd care about your comfort."

"Bold of you to assume I care what you think about the wine."

"Why would you have asked if I liked it if you didn't care?"

"Why would you have asked me to dinner if _you_ didn't care either?"

"You're right. I lied. This is definitely a brutal murder."

She shrugs at the revelation, feigning boredom, and traces the rim of her glass with her fingertip.

"Oh well," she laments, enjoying this immensely. "As long as I get a free meal before I go."

This time, he doesn't bother to hide the smile.

Lily _does_ hide hers.

Barely.

* * *

It's officially been eleven minutes since James's dinner companion disappeared for the loo, and he's beginning to think he may have been ditched.

He fidgets in his seat, scraping up the last remains of his burrata appetizer with a single fork prong, trying to appear like this is all fine, everything's grand—people are often left at dinner tables alone to contemplate life and love and fate and fortune for extended periods of time, no problem, none at all, all brilliant here, many thanks, goodbye.

He eyes the spot where his dinner companion—it's all he can call her. She's never even told him her name, and he's been too much of a coward to ask so far after the fact—recently sat, devouring nearly all of her dumpling appetizer with the gusty speed of a high-performance vacuum, leaving just a single one left before she'd hopped to her feet, declared she was for the toilet, and disappeared around the overabundant leafery surrounding their table. James hadn't thought much of it at the time—she'd been guzzling ice cubes when he found her, and took heartily to the white rioja once he'd convinced her it was actually fine to order, so a trip to the toilet seemed a normal occurrence.

Then five minutes had passed.

Then ten.

James doesn't want to judge, but ten is probably not normal.

But it _is _likely normal for a woman who might have piled down her fill of wine and dumpling, tossed out an absent excuse, skirted around the shrubbery, then made a straight beeline for the restaurant exit, cackling about her victory in thwarting her nemesis at his own game.

James does, indeed, feel thwarted.

But does _not_, interestingly, feel like her nemesis.

Not anymore, anyway.

There's likely something terribly poetic in the fact that he might have officially been abandoned for the evening—again—_just_ as he was actually beginning to genuinely like his date.

Not that she would call it a date.

He's not even convinced she _likes _him much.

In fact, he's almost _certain_ she doesn't.

But James…

Well, he'd _known _she was funny, hadn't he? It's why he'd made the mad decision to invite her to dinner in the first place, because even though she was rude and dramatic and had a penchant for generally unprovoked ice cube launching, she was also quick and clever and, yes, his mother had always teased him about his thing for redheads—but that's _not_ what had made him ask her. Mostly. Probably. Even though it _is _some of the nicest, silkiest, most tempting-looking hair he's ever encountered, with sloping waves draping over her shoulders and bits and pieces she'd absently tuck and twirl like an active taunt.

_Not_ that she likely thought that she was taunting him. And he hadn't _known_ he'd think of it as such when he'd invited her to dinner. But sitting across the table from her, watching her animated expressions, trading teasing barbs like swinging fencing épées...well, James had always been a sucker for a sense of humour. And she got such _delight_ out of besting him, emerald eyes glittering in the table's dim candlelight, her entire face glowing with the cleverness of it.

It was...distracting.

And this was her being _mean_ to him. Honestly, he ought to be counting his blessings that she didn't like him. If she had abruptly decided to be kind, he'd be a bloody goner.

Might be a bloody goner, anyway, sadly.

James isn't certain. It's probably best not to think too much of it. Especially considering there's a terribly high probability that _she's_ gone, in the literal sense, escaped from this terrible encounter, and the horrible man she's been forced to converse with, not even willing to stay and finish her _meal_, he's so terribly and indisputably repugnant—

And then, suddenly, she's back.

"So I owe you about a million heartfelt apologies," she declares, with a loud, barked abruptness that makes him jump as she clatters back into her seat. He's nearly startled himself out of his, but she keeps talking. "I was sitting there in the toilet just now, thinking about life, the way you do when you're in the loo, y'know?"

_God_, James thinks, his heart still pounding in surprise.

Surprise or...something.

"As you do," he repeats, blinking.

"Yeah, and I'm just—so, I'm at the sink washing my hands and trying not to glare at the hot towels in the basket by the half-empty bottles of Chanel No. 5 because I can afford to stay in this hotel too and not _all_ rich people are a source of infinite evil—"

"Infinite—"

"—and I'm thinking about how I acted and all of a sudden, I find myself—and I mean, _literally,_ I'm completely overcome with remorse," she finishes, with the gesticulations to boot, hands swirling in the air and coming to land, one above the other, in the centre of her chest. "Awash with it, _as_ I was washing my hands! Isn't that poetic and also really cheesy and a terrible pun? But the point is, Potter—I don't know your first name, sorry—I've treated you horribly and I'm very, very sorry and so grateful for the dinner because I was _so_ bloody hungry and it was a very kind thing to do for a total stranger who you found on a hotel floor, especially since I hit you with an ice cube," she tacks on, with a slight strain on the last few words, because she's professing her overwhelming remorse in a single breath, "which I honestly didn't _mean_ to do, but I still shouldn't have thrown it and you seem like a really good person and I'm truly very sorry."

It's an apology in approximately nine different parts—more stream of conscious than James is used to in his remorseful speeches, with twists and turns and an unlikely heroine in the form of his previously antagonistic dinner mate.

It's a lot to take in—her jumble of words, her genuinely earnest expression, extensive talk about thoughts on the toilet—and he finds himself grappling for balance within the tide of contrition.

Also, the fact that she's being kind.

_Fuck_, she's being kind.

"That bit was my own fault, to be fair," is all he can think to say, right at that moment, still digesting all this. "The ice, that is. I ducked."

"Ducking is an instinctive response. I _chose_ to throw that ice."

"Both of our 'fight or flight' instincts seem to be on point, then," James replies, finding himself smiling, even as he worries about kindness and goneness, and _she _looks vaguely distressed across the table, the delayed sense of ice projectile regret seeming to serve as a strange tipping point for her. "And it's James, by the way," he adds. "I'm called James. And it's fine. Really. You don't need to apologise—"

"No, I do!" she eagerly interrupts, and leans across the table to clap her hand on his forearm, paying no attention to the salt shaker she disrupts in the process. "This was all my fault and you've been so nice to me in return, buying dinner and all—unless you really are trying to kill me, but I don't think you are because you've got kind eyes, and I know a lot of serial killers have traditionally been attractive, charismatic men, but not _one_ of them has ever had kind eyes."

Quite suddenly, James feels a bit like flushing.

"Thanks?" He laughs, or perhaps beams. He rights the fallen salt shaker, and tries not to stare at her hand on his arm. "You have nice eyes, too—_kind_ eyes," he corrects quickly, and coughs. "You've got kind eyes, too."

By some miracle, the slipped compliment sails directly over her head. "But can you forgive me?"

He shakes his head. "There's nothing to forgive."

"Yes there is. Forgive me."

"No, honestly, it's fine—"

She removes her hand from his arm and straightens up in her seat, posture correct, chin lifted in defiance.

"I won't tell you my name until you do," she declares. "I know you don't know what it is."

Now he does laugh, genuinely.

"What's this, a hostage situation?" He cocks an eyebrow at her, growing steadily more used to how revved he feels by the easy back and forth. By _her_. "One name for one needlessly accepted apology?"

"The alternative means you'll have to sit here and guess until you get it right."

"Well, that ploy didn't work too well for Eric in _The Little Mermaid_. Haven't you any helpful crustaceans to hiss the right answer at me?"

"He won't get out of bed for anything less than a moonlit boat ride."

James slaps absently at his pockets. "Damn. Seems I've left my boat in my other trousers." Her lifted lips and quirked chin imply amusement at this, but she still remains unrelenting. His hands drop back to his sides and he shakes his head again. "Really, it's fine. You saved _me_, after all. I hate eating alone."

"I came here for a free dinner, not to save you from your own company. Accidental good deeds don't count."

"And I brought you dinner to gain myself company, not out of tragic sympathy for the ice-eating floor hazard blocking my door. So we're still square there."

"I threw an ice cube at you," she reminds him again. "That was wretched. Forgive me."

"It's—"

"James," she cuts in, sounding stern and decided, as if she's about to turn him over her knee and spank him. It's a silly and...well, _complex_ image, but even that is overshadowed by the heady spike of warming pleasure he feels at hearing her say his name. _James_. He wants to bathe in the sound of it. "I'm dead serious. _Forgive_ me."

Suddenly, there's only one thing he urgently cares about.

"Tell me your name," he says quietly. "Then I'll forgive you."

She chews on the inside of her cheek for a moment, contemplating the offer, perhaps wondering if he'll stick to his end of the bargain, but then… "It's Lily."

"Lily." The light _ls_ slip easily off his tongue, and he eyes her for a moment, thinking _yes, that fits. _He smiles. _Lily. _"I forgive you for trying to maim me with ice. Thank you for coming to dinner anyway."

"No, thank _you_ for the forgiveness," she returns, and smiles—a bright, beautiful, dazzling, heartfelt, _thwack, you're done for, killer_ of a smile—before she jabs her fork into her last remaining dumpling and lifts it into the air. "That was all I needed to hear."

It's all James needs to hear, too.

Gone.

He's _gone_.

Shit.


End file.
